Geordie Shore and the dawn of 'hyper-reality TV'

Andrew Pettie reports on a bizarre new TV trend.

If you thought reality TV died a death with the end of Big Brother, think again: the lowest common denominator is about to get a fraction lower. Yesterday MTV announced it was to start filming a new reality TV series, Geordie Shore, which will follow the party lifestyles (ie drunken exploits) of “Newcastle’s finest lads and lasses”. The series is a spin-off of Jersey Shore (click on the above video for a taster), which appalled viewers, horrified advertisers and won record ratings in the US.

Both series are at the vanguard of a new televisual trend: “hyper-reality TV”. You could argue that reality television started life with the first fly-on-the-wall documentaries in the early 1970s; in Britain the pioneering example was Paul Watson’s 12-part observational documentary The Family (which aired on the BBC in 1974), although it was itself modelled on Craig Gilbert’s US series An American Family (1972). At the time, the fly-on-the-wall format felt thrillingly fresh and intimate. Over the years, however, viewers grew familiar with it and thrill-seeking TV producers realised they needed a twist. Enter Big Brother, and hundreds of shows like it, which placed its subjects in a heightened version of reality by cooping them up in a confined space and then poking them with a metaphorical (and in some cases literal) sticks.

For a decade, millions of viewers were entertained. But over time the conceit grew stale: contestants knew how to play to the cameras; viewers had seen it all before. Yet the reality TV producers weren’t finished and had two further trumps up their sleeve: minor celebrities (who were happy to abase themselves on shows such as I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! for an extra seven minutes of fame) and a new breed of TV series that fused the filming methods of a fly-on-the-wall documentary with the story arcs and cliff-hangers of a scripted soap.

The trend for “hyper-reality TV” started in the US with two MTV series, Laguna Beach (2004-6) and The Hills (2006-10). Both were phenomenally successful reality series which purported to follow the real lives of spoilt, sun-kissed twentysomethings in California, but actually moulded their lives into a soap opera of sorts, as they were implicitly encouraged to behave colourfully in front of the cameras and play out especially emotional scenes (such as splitting up with an unwanted boyfriend) with a camera crew specifically invited along to record the moment.

Now “hyper-reality TV” has reached the UK. First with ITV2’s The Only Way Is Essex, a clunky yet weirdly compelling British take on The Hills. And later this year with MTV’s Geordie Shore, which will no doubt be shocking, appalling and enthralling viewers in equal measure this Spring. As Winston Smith discovered to his cost, Big Brother always wins in the end.